A smooth stone with the image of a flying crane carved into it sits on some papers on my desk. It’s pretty to look at and comfortable to hold. It reminds me of a story my friend Jens told me a few weeks ago on retreat. When he was in Thailand, a monk placed a round stone on his palm and encouraged him to squeeze it tightly. His hand began to hurt. So the monk said, “Now release your grip and relax your hand.” After a few moments he asked, “Does your hand feel better?” Jens nodded. Pointing to the stone the monk said, “Notice it hasn’t moved. Whether your hand hurts or feels good is not the fault of the stone. It’s what you do with it that matters. Hindrances are just stones we try to squeeze.”
Hindrance is the traditional term for the thoughts, feelings, and other disturbances that seem to pull the mind-heart away from the peace and wellbeing we seek in meditation. By extension, hindrances are anything in life that disrupts happiness and contentment. The monk suggested hindrances are as organic and impersonal as stones. They are not a problem as long as we relate to them wisely. I love the metaphor. It got me thinking about all the ways we relate to the stones in our hands. Rather than squeeze them and relax, we could hold on tightly a little longer. The hand will go numb or fall asleep and feel better. But a numb fist is not much use in typing on a computer, drinking a glass of water, or playing a piano. Another way we could react to the hurt is to jump up and down and run around. This may distract us from the pain. But it makes contentment impossible. Another response is to blame the stone and throw it away. This is popular because it relaxes the hand and lets us feel better … until the stone hits someone and they throw it back at us. This is a metaphor for much of the violence in human society. In traditional Buddhism there are five principal kinds of hindrances: (1) grasping: gripping the stone tightly, (2) aversion: throwing the stone away, (3) restlessness: the mind that runs hither and yon, (4) sloth and torpor: the mind that goes numb or falls asleep, and (5) doubt and confusion: seeing the stone as the problem. Regardless of the flavor of the hindrance, they all arise naturally out of the stress and strain of life. The mind likes to tell tales about them. If aversion arises, the mind might say, “He treated me poorly,” or “She had no right to say that.” If worry or restlessness arises, the mind might say, “How will I get it all done?” or “What will they think?” The mind tries to soothe us with stories and ideas about what’s going on. But they rarely help. Believe it or not, at the core of all hindrances is a knot of tension that just wants to expend its extra energy so it can relax and disappear. The trick is to ignore the stories, concepts, ideas, and other contents of thought and shift awareness to the mood, attitude, or tone of the mind-heart. Then the knot of energy becomes noticeable. We can simply relax into it. This allows it to do what it always wanted – untangle itself and disperse. As it dissolves, ease and insight are left in its wake. Wellbeing and wisdom are not qualities we can add to our experience. Rather they are what’s left behind when the tension softens and dissolves. There is no need to do anything with hindrances. They are humble, impersonal messengers. Like the stone in the hand, they are not a problem if we listen to their essence and relate to them wisely. Mettā, Walking through the fields along the American River, my mind ambled off into little vignettes about different people and situations. The stories had similar outlines: someone was treating me badly me and I was calling them out for it. “Hmmm,” I thought, “This is interesting.” I shifted my attention from the plot to the feeling tone of the thoughts. There was a sharp bitterness behind each story. “Forgiveness is wiser than bitterness,” I thought. I sat down, closed my eyes, and began forgiveness meditation. The mind-heart resisted. It preferred bitterness to manufactured forgiveness. Hmmm. I’ve come to trust my mind to know how to untangle itself. So I didn’t push it in a direction it didn’t want to go. Instead I got out some writing paper and began to list people with whom I held a grudge. I didn’t write about why. I stayed away from stories about them – I don’t believe those. Instead I relaxed and wrote about the feelings that arose. Underneath the bitterness was hurt or loneliness or poignancy. I let go of the labels and softened into those tones and textures. After doing this for a short time I noticed I was smiling. There was still heartache or lonesomeness. But there was also a glowing wellbeing that caused me to beam unconsciously. As I became more aware of that glowing in the back of my mind, it spread. Soon it was difficult to remember what had been upsetting or even who the difficult people were. Back home an hour later, the glow still suffused my awareness. It was as if the mind- heart just wanted me to notice those negative feelings without judging them. Simple awareness was enough to allow them to release and for a natural buoyancy to surface. It’s a lesson I seem to have to learn over and over. We don’t have to fix the mind-heart, push it into a spiritual mold, or grab for the gusto or the holy. We just relax into a guileless, kind, open awareness. The trick is to ignore the stories we tell ourselves and open to the tones and textures without preference. Sengstan wrote, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. …When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.” All we have to do is take care of awareness. Then awareness will take care of us. Mettā, Doug Wisdom without kindness is not wise. Kindness without wisdom is not kind.
Wisdom is perception. Cleverness is figuring things out. But the wise person sees simply to the heart of a situation or person. Love also starts with perception and adds acceptance. If we don’t see a person clearly, we may love an image we have of them, but not the real person. If we don’t accept them as they are, there is no real love. If we don’t see and accept ourselves as we truly are, we have no self-wisdom or self-love. The Buddha taught two separate yet deeply integrated practices. One develops clear awareness which gives rise to insight and flowers in wisdom. The other develops love or kindness. Kindness is taught by radiating kindness, compassion, joy, peace or other wholesome qualities to oneself and others. Wisdom is taught by learning to recognize and soften the inner tensions that distort clear seeing. These two practices can be taught separately. But neither develops much depth without the other. When they are interwoven, both develop more deeply and quickly because on the deepest level they are the same. When we sit down to meditate we may be greeted by a plethora of phenomena: thoughts, feelings, sensations, fears, yearnings, flickering images, clips of memory, fragments of melodies, and more. To help navigate this inner landscape, the Buddha drew many maps: the map of jhānas, the map of dependent origination, the maps of hindrances, awakening factors, ennobling truths, and more. I’ve found the map of the jhānas particularly helpful. Used skillfully it can guide us quickly up the path. However, used unskillfully it can leave us spinning our wheels in a ditch without an AAA card. The difference is in how we view the map. It can be viewed through the lens of wisdom. Or it can be viewed through the lens of our preferences: what we like and don’t like, what we want and don’t want. The distinction is subtle and profound. Before looking at the distinction, it helps to remember the adage that maps are not the territory. Like all maps, the Buddha’s are quick sketches on scraps of parchment: highly codified abstractions leaving out most of the vitality of the landscape. A road map, for example, is just a set of lines on paper or a computer screen. It leaves out trees, potholes, guardrails, embankments, buildings, and thousands of other details. Some computer maps use photographs to fill in details. But even those pictures are frozen in time and leave out the effects of time of day, weather, the flow of people and cars, change in seasons, and almost everything else that makes the terrain a shimmering reality. If we fixate on the maps, we are stuck on second-hand drawings rather than first-hand experience. The Burmese monk Sayadaw U Tejaniya calls this “second-hand wisdom.” Many meditators understand this trap and try to avoid it by not learning about the jhānas. They'd rather discover the territory themselves in their own meditation. While the intentions are laudable, the results can be discouraging. My own practice wandered in circles on a plateau for several decades for lack of understanding about how the mind-heart unfolds naturally – which is what the jhānas map out. As I began to understood the map, I still had to explore and learn directly for myself. But I knew better about which direction to head and where to look. The art of using spiritual maps wisely grows out of the nature of wisdom itself. In Buddhism, wisdom refers to dependent origination. Dependent origination refers to causation: everything arises because of causes and conditions and ceases when those antecedent conditions fade. For example, restlessness arises from too much energy in the mind-heart. If we try to force the mind to be still, we put more effort and energy into it – the conditions that give rise to more restlessness. Trying hard to be peaceful leads away from peace. If we understand the causal relationship, then we relax and the restlessness gradually fades on its own. If we look at the Buddha’s maps through the lens of desire and aversion, we are like the child in the back of the car asking, “Daddy, are we there yet? How come we can't be there now? I don't like it here.” If we look at those maps through the lens of wisdom, we may see objectively that we might be happier if we were someplace else. But rather than grasping for the destination or comparing our progress to someone else’s, we are more interested in the process. What are the causes and conditions that give rise to where I am? What are the causes and conditions that might give rise to more contentment? We experiment by creating more beneficial conditions. We use the jhānas or dependent origination or other maps to explore and see what happens. The art of it is becoming more interested in seeing the causal relationships than in getting any specific place. If this results in more peace, that's lovely. If it results in more distress, that's lovely too because we've learned something about how the territory actually works. Like good scientists, we're not grasping for a result, just learning how natural laws work. The maps of the jhānas, etc. suggest experiments we can try. This changes second-hand knowledge into first-hand insight and wisdom. I’m a slow learner. I push and pull more than I'd like to admit. But it’s become clear that reality doesn't care what I want or don't want. Reality follows its own nature rather than my preference. Grasping and aversion just add more pain. Ironically, the more we try to get someplace, the slower our progress. The more we’re content with what is and seeing how it works, the faster we change. Becoming more interested in the process than the product emerges as the only sensible path. The Buddha's maps suggest various experiments we can try. Taking his word for it is second-hand wisdom. Discovering through our own experiences gradually replaces the sketchy maps with a rich, first-hand wisdom about the flux and flow of being alive. Mettā, Doug Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you. ( Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan) “I undertake the precept to refrain from speaking or acting with ill will.” If we take this precept quietly and genuinely, we’re vowing to do our best to not act out of anger, impatience, grumpiness, fear, or other aversive states.
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